The Xinjiang Model: Roads in the Kyrgyzstan–China Borderlands

Abstract

Over the past two decades, Kyrgyzstan has routinely been referred to as “a landlocked country with formidable geographic barriers” by key development banks, private sector stakeholders, and Kyrgyz state agencies themselves. Bordered by Tajikistan to the southwest, Uzbekistan to the west and southwest, Kazakhstan to the north and China to the east, Kyrgyzstan finds itself at a strategic hub in a grand vision of reinvigorating Central Asia’s historical role as a land bridge between Asia and Europe. One of the most important highways in Kyrgyzstan, the Bishkek–Osh Road project, serves as a vehicle to understand how post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan is struggling to transform itself from land-locked to land-linked through road construction. Given the similarities between the geographical and sociopolitical conditions of Kyrgyzstan and Xinjiang, located at the eastern and western areas of Tian Shan Mountain respectively, Chinese sponsored road construction in Kyrgyzstan is conceptualized as a process of transplanting the Chinese Xinjiang experience to its neighbor. China’s increasing influence on Kyrgyzstan’s road construction industry is examined in the following three aspects: geographical challenges, engineering (im)possibilities, and economic and sociopolitical desires. In particular, this article highlights the issue in the context of the histories of both non-Chinese agents’ involvement in road construction in Kyrgyzstan since the early 1990s, and China’s own ongoing efforts to expand road networks across its northwestern province, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, since the early 2000s. From a transnational perspective, this article explores the technical and ideological aspects of contemporary road construction in the China-Central Asia borderlands.